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The Origin And Nature Of Our Institutional Models

From: Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the Mentally Retarded
Creator: Wolf Wolfensberger (author)
Date: January 10, 1969
Publisher: President's Committee on Mental Retardation, Washington, D.C.
Source: Available at selected libraries

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Thus, education came to be viewed as worthless. Rogers (1898), superintendent of Faribault (Minn.), questioned: "Does the Education of the Feebleminded Pay?, and Johnson (1899, pp.228-229) stated: "We made a mistake in keeping many children in school too long and taking them farther than they will have any need for." Bernstein (1913, p. 59) observed: "The patients who give us the most trouble are the ones who have been taught to read and write. They are always looking for an opportunity to send out a letter or note secretly, and give us trouble in other ways as well. If they could not write, much of the disturbance would be eliminated."

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Even special education in the community, far from being seen primarily as a constructive and viable alternative, was seized upon as a means of identifying retardates for subsequent institutionalization: "If the special schools were so conducted as to constitute clearing houses to separate the inherently feeble-minded from those whose mental growth is retarded by circumstances temporary in character, they would serve a useful purpose; but if they are attempting the impossible, the education of the inherently feeble-minded to equip them to battle single-handed in the struggle for existence and thus prevent their entrance into institutions during their early years, they are harmful. It is our duty to point out the limitation of usefulness for such schools" (Murdoch, 1903, p. 71; similarly, 1909, pp. 65-66; Fitts, 1915; and Schlapp, 1915, p. 325). "The modem public school class for defective children ensures diagnosis and treatment at an early age, helps to inform the parents as to the dangers of mental defect, and admirably serves as a clearing house for permanent segregation, when necessary before adult life is reached. These classes should be established in every city and large town" (Fernald, 1915, p. 293).

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Another community alternative that today strikes us as most progressive, viz., the granting of a subsidy or "pension" to needy families with retarded persons in the household, was viciously attacked. Kentucky had had such a law since 1793 (Estabrook, 1928; Fernald, 1893), but superintendent Stewart from Kentucky (1894, p. 311) confessed that he was "...ashamed to tell you of our idiot law," and said that he had tried for 16 years to have the law repealed. He likened this law to the scalp law for foxes under which every fox scalp was rewarded with a $2.50 bounty until people took to raising foxes. "Now there is a premium offered for idiots." "The system is heinous" (Reports from States, 1890, p. 322). Dunlap (1899) also expressed disapproval of the pension law, and Estabrook (1928) suggested that it be repealed and the money used to enlarge the institution instead!

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Finally, even the newly developing psychological community clinics were interpreted as agencies of the eugenic work (e.g., see Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 1913, 18, 13) rather than of community assistance.

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The End Of The Indictment

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The peak of the indictment period was between about 1908 and 1912. By about 1920, workers in the field began to recognize two facts. Firstly, studies of the community adjustment of retardates showed that they were not the menace as had been thought; and secondly, it was realized that the aims of segregation could not be achieved. One of the first major admissions of the failure of both sterilization and segregation took place in an address by Taft (1918), who commented: "...when by segregation we mean a fairly complete shutting off from society of all the feeble-minded, including the higher grade types, we ignore a profound aversion on the part of people in general to confinement for life for any human being, particularly when no offense has been committed commensurate with such punishment and when the individual to be segregated seems to the ordinary observer not to be very different from himself. This, combined with the feeling which relatives, particularly of the high grade feeble-minded have against segregation, makes any very complete program of this kind quite impossible for some time to come" (p. 545).

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As early as 1915, Fernald (p. 296) had observed that "the courts are seldom willing to utilize even existing commitment laws without the consent of the parents, except in extreme cases." Perhaps the only justification for naming Howe's original institution for the Great Indictor himself is that Fernald, in the past years of his life, reversed himself, first in a celebrated speech in 1917. In 1919, he said: "The average citizen is not yet convinced that he should be taxed to permanently support an individual who is capable of thirty, fifty or seventy percent of normal economic efficiency, on the mere theory that he is more likely than a normal individual to become a social problem" (pp. 119-120; see also Fernald, 1924). "In practice it has been found very difficult to ensure life-long segregation of the average moron. The courts are as ready to release the defective as they are to commit him in the first place. However proper and desirable it may be in theory to ensure the life-long segregation of large numbers of the moron class, it is a fact that there is a deep-seated prejudice on the part of lawyers, judges, and legislators towards assuming in advance that every moron will necessarily and certainly misbehave to an extent that he should be deprived of his liberty. That such misgivings are well-founded is apparently shown by the studies made of discharged patients at Rome and Waverly. At Waverly, a careful study of the discharges for twenty-five years showed that a very small proportion of the discharged male morons had committed crimes, or had married or become parents, or had failed to support themselves, or had become bad citizens." "We have begun to recognize the fact that there are good morons and bad morons, ..."(pp.119-120). After hearing Fernald in 1917, Murdoch (1917, p. 41) said: "...the pendulum ...had gone too far and is coming back."

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